[
    {
        "id": 211268,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1987",
        "page_number": 329,
        "title": "RAS-1987",
        "content_text": "304\n\nSteve Yui-sang Tsang, Democracy Shelved, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1988.\n\nThough about the 1945-1952 period, Democracy Shelved is important and timely because its publication coincides with another period in which plans for democracy in Hong Kong have been shelved.\n\nSteve Yui-sang Tsang, a Research Associate at Wolfson-St. Antony's Chinese Studies Centre and Rhodes House Library, Oxford, has written a blow-by-blow account of the abortive attempt to introduce major constitutional reforms in Hong Kong in the immediate post-war period, when decolonisation was in the air.\n\nThe book is important for the light it sheds on an important historical period but, even more so, for its illumination of the reasons behind events transpiring today.\n\nOn one level, it is the role of personalities. Sir Mark Young retired before he could see his reforms, dubbed the Young Plan, implemented. Similarly, Sir Edward Youde died before his proposal \"to develop progressively a system of government the authority for which is firmly rooted in Hong Kong, which is able to represent authoritatively the views of the people of Hong Kong, and which is more directly accountable to the people of Hong Kong,\" could take shape.\n\nBut Steve Tsang shows that Young was no wild-eyed radical. His reforms were moderate. And he was enough of a realist to know the importance of China's views on the colony. That is why he recommended the appointment of a Political Adviser to the Hong Kong governor who would be a specialist on Chinese affairs.\n\nSteve Tsang concludes by raising the question whether failure to implement the Young Plan represents a lost chance. His answers it in the affirmative, concluding: “On balance, it would appear that the Young Plan could have worked successfully during the period under study.\"\n\nThe reader is free to draw his own conclusions as to what the ramifications would be for today's Hong Kong as it wrestles with the need for political reforms on the eve of its return to Chinese sovereignty.\n\nFRANK CHING",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213362,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1994",
        "page_number": 184,
        "title": "RAS-1994",
        "content_text": "167\n\nKong, HIIKBRAS, vol. 14 (1974) pp 12-27 and his Facilities for Research on the Public Records Office of Hong Kong, in Alan Birch, Y C Jao and Elizabeth Sinn (eds) Research Materials for Hong Kong Studies, (Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1984) pp 153-192\n\n16 In 1994, the Executive Council instructed that all records over thirty years old should be reviewed, this does not automatically mean opening the files to the public, and some materials are re-classified. Applications for use still have to go to the generating agent (department) for approval. But it is now much easier to get access to records over 30 years old.\n\n17 Peter Young, The Hung On-Lo Memorial Library, the Hong Kong Collection, in Alan Birch, Y C Jao and Elizabeth Sinn (eds), pp. 137-152\n\nIX The most current project is an index to CO129, the Colonial Office Original Correspondence series on Hong Kong, from 1841-1926, containing about 45,000 despatches. The index, put on CD-Rom, operates on the basis of search by keywords. The chief investigator of the project is Elizabeth Sinn who currently runs the Hong Kong History Workshop. Her major works include Power and Charity. The Early History of the Tung Wah Hospital, Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1989) and Growing with Hong Kong: The Bank of East Asia 1919-1994 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1994).\n\n19 Peter Y L. Ng. The 1819 Edition of the Hsin-an Hsien-chih a critical examination with translation and notes. Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, 1644-1842 (Unpublished M.A. Thesis, University of Hong Kong, 1961). The work was published many years later as New Peace County: A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong region, prepared for press and with additional materials by Hugh D.R. Baker, (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1983).\n\n20 Ng Lun Ngai-ha, Interaction of East and West: Developments of Public Education in Early Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1984).\n\n21 Other scholars include L.Y. Chiu, K.C. Chan, K.C. Fok, Ming K. Chan, Elizabeth Sinn and Steve Tsang at the HKU, David Faure and Bernard Luk at the Chinese University, John Young, Fung Pui-wing and Chung Po Yin (much later) at the Baptist University, and later Choi Chi-cheong and Liu Dik Sang at the University of Science and Technology - although not all of them are, or would agree to being labelled as, practitioners of local history.\n\n22 Patrick Hase, Research Materials for Village Studies, in Alan Birch, Y C Jao and Elizabeth Sinn (eds) Research Material for Hong Kong Studies (Ibid) pp. 31-46\n\n23 David Faure, Bernard H.K. Luk and Alice Ngai-ha Lun Ng (comp.) Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, 3 volumes (Hong Kong Museum of History, 1986).\n\n24 David Faure, Bernard H.K. Luk and Alice Ngan-ha Lun Ng, The Hong Kong Region According to Historical Inscriptions, in David Faure, James Hayes and Alan Birch (eds). From Village to City: Studies in the Traditional Roots of Hong Kong Society (Hong Kong Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong, 1984) pp 43-54",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g",
        "rank": 0
    }
]